‘The Chestnut Man’ Just Pulled Off Its Most Brutal Twist Yet, And Book Fans Are Furious
After a five-year absence, Netflix’s icy Danish noir ‘The Chestnut Man’ returned on May 7, 2026 with a six-episode sequel titled ‘Hide and Seek,’ and viewers are still reeling from how far it went. The follow-up reunites Danica Curcic and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard as Naia Thulin and Mark Hess, this time chasing a stalker who taunts victims with a sinister Danish counting rhyme.
The case quickly spirals into something far more personal, weaving together a 1992 cold crime, an unsolved teen murder, and a serial killer who weaponizes divorce and infidelity. By the time the credits roll on episode six, the show has detonated two enormous twists, killed off a major character, and pivoted away from Søren Sveistrup’s source novel in ways no one was bracing for.
Inside the Hide and Seek Killer Reveal
The murderer behind the Hide and Seek killings is unmasked as Thea Staal, who has been living under the assumed name Signe and posing as Marie Holst’s closest confidant. She is the daughter of Thoger Staal, the 1992 child killer who opens the season’s flashback, and she has spent her adult life copycatting his methodology by posing victims inside human-sized nests.
Signe’s path to becoming a serial killer is rooted in personal collapse. After her father’s crimes shattered her family and sent her mother to Poland, she was raised in an orphanage, eventually marrying a man named Roy who cheated on her, and then losing him and their two children in a devastating accident. She funnelled that grief into an obsession with infidelity cases at her job.
Her father, Thoger Staal, had been referred to as the Cuckoo Killer, and she now followed in his footsteps to become his copycat, the Hide and Seek Killer. Working at the Agency for Family Law gave her the perfect access point. Both Zara Solak and Andreas Lund had divorced their spouses to pursue new relationships, and Ditte Kolster had filed for divorce to be with another woman, all of which Signe took as personal insults worth punishing.
Naia Thulin’s Shocking Mid-Season Exit
The bigger gut punch lands earlier than expected. Naia Thulin does not die in the book, and she does in episode 3 of the Netflix series-adaptation, completely reshaping the emotional direction of the story. Peter Hougard, the unhinged ex-husband of victim Ditte Kolster, enters the Agency for Family Law with a rifle after finding out he would lose custody of his children, and Thulin’s attempt to negotiate ends in tragedy.
In the confrontation, Peter shoots Naia, and she bleeds out on the floor, while both Peter and Ditte are murdered by the real perpetrator. The fallout reshapes the entire back half of the season. Mark Hess, who had only returned to Copenhagen because of his brother Jon’s hospitalization, is forced to confront the consequences of having ghosted Thulin two years earlier after a brief relationship.
Critics and viewers have been bitterly split. Across Reddit and social media, viewers have called the twist heartbreaking, unnecessary, and completely different from the novel. Some argue it raises the stakes, while others feel the show sacrificed its strongest asset, the chemistry between Curcic and Følsgaard, for shock value alone.
How ‘Hide and Seek’ Departs From the Source Novel
The Netflix adaptation follows the broad strokes of Sveistrup’s second novel where the killer is concerned, but breaks from it in one massive way. The Netflix series follows the second novel closely with the serial killer, though the character is named Terese in the book. Crucially, the book version of Thulin survives, and her partnership with Hess remains the spine of the story heading into book three.
Søren Sveistrup is continuing the book series, so there will be more stories in this universe, but the issue is whether the Netflix adaptation has written itself into a corner. Showrunners Dorte W. Høgh and Emilie Lebech Kaae clearly made a deliberate creative call to go darker. The series essentially splits into two halves, with the first feeling like a continuation of season one and the second pivoting into something closer to grief horror.
That single character decision leaves the franchise in a peculiar spot. Any third season would now have to reinvent itself around Hess alone, or introduce an entirely new partner, since the central duo book readers expected has been permanently dismantled. The reaction online has been immediate and intense, with the writer currently working on book 3 about Thulin and Hess, making the divergence even more pointed.
What the Final Scene Means for Hess and Le
The final confrontation plays out at Thoger Staal’s old lakehouse, which Signe had been using as her safehouse to torture Marie Holst. Marie escaped from the pool to stab Signe several times, killing her, saving herself and Hess, and avenging the death of her daughter, who Signe had murdered two years earlier for the affair with Roy that ended Signe’s marriage.
Two weeks later, the show pulls off its only genuinely tender moment. Hess stands over the grave of Thulin, reconciling with her daughter Le at the cemetery, telling her he has bought a place in town and wants Le to move in with him so he can be the father figure she desperately needs after losing her mother. It is a quietly devastating closing image given everything that came before.
For Hess, the closure makes him realize that his flight-risk tendencies are preventing him from setting down roots, and he makes the decision to quit Europol and find a new job in Denmark so he can remain a reliable grounding point in Le’s life. The case closes, but the emotional damage refuses to stay buried. Just like at the end of Season 1, the show wisely reminds us that even in the face of unthinkable cruelty, people are still capable of good.
After watching Hess limp away from that lakehouse and choose Le over a return to Europol, what did you make of the show’s decision to permanently take Thulin off the board halfway through, and would you still tune in for a third season without Curcic and Følsgaard’s partnership at the center of it?
